From AI Hype to Hiring Reality

[00:00:00] Welcome to Stacked Tech Hiring Insights, the podcast where we’ll break down what’s actually happening in tech hiring. So I’m Mark Slocum, the Partner and Lead of our technology practice at Hirewell. Each month we’ll be joined by expert recruiting guests to talk trends, real world insights, and practical advice

[00:00:20] you can actually use. So all in a quick 10 minutes. This month we are joined by the one and only Matt Massucci, CEO and Founder of Hirewell. So let’s get into it, Matt. Thanks, Mark. I’m super excited to be the first guest. Well, we’ll see how it goes, but here we go. So, awesome. Well, there is a lot to talk about, as we will, you know, continue to dive in over the course of the year.

[00:00:47] But there is no more pressing topic in the world right now, at least on the tech front than AI and what it is doing to all aspects of the working world, not just the recruiting [00:01:00] space, but we’ll stick mostly to the recruiting world. And at Hirewell, we’ve been doing some pretty interesting, sort of growth activity and acquisitions in recent months.

[00:01:09] And that is what I wanted to start off with Matt and have him talk a little bit about one of our most recent acquisitions and some of the exciting things that they’re doing and how we’re looking to kind of grow and expand that across our great networks as well. Yeah, absolutely. It’s been a fairly interesting run and kind of one of our strategies over the last couple of years has been to look at, you know,

[00:01:32] acquisitions or team moves of kind of smaller firms that we think you know, are like-minded and share kind of the same values and the sort of cultural aspect of working with clients is as we do, and, you know, we did that a couple years ago with Tom and Jen from the team at The Collective Search.

[00:01:46] You know, late in 2025, we did it with the team with CS Recruiting to expand into supply chain and logistics. And then, you know, obviously what you’re referring to is the most recent deal we did to bring on the Newance Recruiting team, which we’re super excited about. They’re a boutique [00:02:00] shop out of Milwaukee.

[00:02:01] I was approached by Amanda, their founder, mid Q4 of last year. And while it wasn’t necessarily like top of our priority because we were sort of knee deep in the process with CS Recruiting, you know, when I started to peel back there was just a lot of interesting things to it.

[00:02:17] One, obviously, we have a strong presence in Chicago. You know, Milwaukee and Wisconsin is close by, but it’s a very different market. And I think having people on the ground there was a huge advantage. I also liked their way of engaging with teams. It was heavy solutions oriented, not just a run of the mill traditional, contingent recruiting firm, but doing a lot of, you know, recurring RPO work, embedded recruiters, things like that, that we,

[00:02:40] have always had a key part of our business. But then the third part that was super interesting was kind of their community building aspect. Amanda and Angela, the two founders, you know, definitely had leaned heavily into that and they started, or are heavily involved in a group called the Midwest Founders Club, where basically it [00:03:00] allows, founders of, you know, entrepreneurs of small tech based companies to network, you know, interact.

[00:03:06] But it’s also kind of evolved into basically a CIO meetup called SaaS Club, where they put those founders in front of, you know, local CIOs. And kind of use as an opportunity to network, mentor, kind of pitch products ideas, and also customize for a targeted audience. So, you know, we’ve got our first event in two weeks, I think up in Milwaukee, which is, I think, super exciting.

[00:03:28] And it, it’s something that we strongly believe in and we think we can expand upon and something that I think just has a ton of potential. That’s great. That’s great. So it’s an opportunity for really any market to bring together leaders, proven leaders, aspiring Founders, network, learn from one another across kind of every discipline, or what are the different sort of functions there?

[00:03:54] Yeah, I mean, so the first event coming up is specifically for, you know, [00:04:00] CIOs in manufacturing world, which, you know, clearly the kind of the Midwest concept is a pretty diverse set of industries. But, you know, manufacturing and industrial is a very strong sector in the Midwest and, you know, and so the idea is pairing up companies that or founders that are creating technology or sort of AI products within that space to be able to get in front of CIOs of these fortune, you know, 500, fortune 1000 companies, and talk about kind of what they’re building.

[00:04:28] Get real time feedback, real time mentoring, obviously for the CIOs in attendance, it’s an interesting opportunity, one to mentor, but two, to really stay sort of cutting edge of who’s doing what in the market. And you know, the beauty of it is, is getting these vendors to build something you actually need versus, you know, products they think you need.

[00:04:46] Right. And I think that’s kind of the pain point that tends to exist when you’re talking about developing product market fit for, you know, for kind of these early stage companies. So getting that real time feedback is pretty invaluable. So. Yeah, it’s cool stuff and I think future ones will [00:05:00] be, you know, financial services or FinTech and other things like that where, again, just specific areas where you’re, you know, pretty curated audiences and kind of target lists.

[00:05:10] That’s great. I know so many of my conversations with leaders, whether it’s in the talent space, HR or you know, technology or just business leaders in general, is everyone’s looking for ways to get engaged again, back in the community, right? Like COVID spread everybody out. And then, you know, it’s been a tough market for a couple years, but, we’ve really seen that mindset kind of back towards, growth and bringing the community back to together.

[00:05:34] But people aren’t real interested in going to 300 person large networking events. They want to have something that’s a little bit more curated, a little bit more sort of vision and focus for what it is and have some of those real conversations that you really want as you’re, you know, building out a true network and trying to find other partners in the space.

[00:05:52] 100%. And that’s exactly their philosophy and sort of what I think they’ve done a cool job building there. There’s also a separate one for [00:06:00] CFOs, and I went to that two weeks ago. That was also in Milwaukee, where really there was no presentation. It was just an opportunity for people to share ideas and you know, whether the it was intended or not, that the

[00:06:12] conversation went deep into kind of AI use cases and how these different CFOs and kind of heads of F&A for these organizations were utilizing it. It was, you know, I was kind of a, just a fly on the wall, but it was just fascinating to hear kind of who’s doing what, who some of the early adopters are and what they’re able to do.

[00:06:29] And it’s, it was, it was interesting stuff and I think it was it was definitely a positive event, you know, kind of something, whereas three to five, kind of a quick hitting one, you know, again, curated, like you mentioned, I think there 13, 14 people in the room. So it’s not overwhelming and it’s just a lot of peers and opportunity to kind of hear who else is doing what in the market.

[00:06:47] That’s great. So for those that are interested, how do they go about finding out, how do they go about signing up for one of these events? Yeah, I mean, there is, there’s a website called, Midwest Founders Club. I will share that. We’ll put that probably in the notes. I [00:07:00] don’t have the exact URL memorized yet.

[00:07:02] But yeah, I mean we’ll be including it and kind of try to again, curate a pretty good list of folks that we think, ’cause you know, while most of the events have been in, you know, Milwaukee or Wisconsin area, we’re gonna be doing more in Chicago and other kind of areas where, again, to really broaden and expand things.

[00:07:20] Right. Yeah, absolutely. And we have Hirewell employees across, you know, all major markets across the country. So the goal being, you know, replicate these across those and allow them to build their communities there, in addition to just remotely. So, those in our network, if you have good ideas or want to be involved in this, you know, let us know.

[00:07:38] Reach out. So it’s interesting the concept of community, right? And true partnerships right now and having that deep network, we’ve really seen that come back in a huge way. You know, over the last couple of years, as, you know, the AI bots are fighting with the AI bots and fake candidates, and,

[00:07:58] you know, sort of the, the [00:08:00] evolution of org structures changing and really going more international, even at the small to mid-size business that we really had never seen at scale. So it’s kind of a constantly evolving time right now and I think, you know, this is just ever present, bringing up the importance of those relationships and trusted partners and networks in the most advanced sort of technical world we’ve ever seen.

[00:08:26] Yeah, it’s fascinating times. I mean, if you hit on four topics just in that little blurb, but yeah, I mean, we’re seeing a lot. You know, the importance of community and kind of getting to know people. I think that is how, you know, business has traditionally been done forever. I think it went away for a bit during the, you know, kind of the early days where everybody’s working from home.

[00:08:46] But I think people recognize, like, it’s just, it’s really hard to build a network, get in front of people. And I think there’s value of community building, you know, in terms of like kind of the AI proliferation and kind of what it’s doing to the hiring market. Yeah. I mean we’ve seen this rise

[00:08:58] of fake candidates, [00:09:00] fake profiles, you know, people doing different things with AI to really kind of clog up the hiring process. And it’s been kind of an interesting thing where we’ve seen an uptick in our, you know, RPO practice where companies need additional help to kind of sift through all of it and kind of, you know, separate the, the real from the not real and the top profiles from ones that are fake and you hear everything from

[00:09:24] either, augmented profiles, fake profiles to the rise of, you know, people based in North Korea getting jobs at Amazon and such like that because they’re able to just, be anywhere and kind ofgame that the hiring process, which is just kind of nuts and something I’d never thought we’d get to in the hiring world.

[00:09:43] Yes, we’re all kind of on this ride together, figuring it out. But what I’ve seen on the RPO front specifically is, we’re figuring out with our clients at the same time, right? They have this growth period that they need to go through, they need some resources, someone they know can trust, can embed within their process [00:10:00] and their culture.

[00:10:01] But it probably has an end date to it at some point, right? So hiring someone that timeline just wouldn’t work out. So they’ve looked to us, who they know, and can help us kind of navigate, you know, this ever evolving, sort of changing hiring landscape right now. And you know, we love it.

[00:10:18] It’s an enjoyableengagement with our clients. We help them through a key growth period. And we’re constantly sort of educating ourselves on how this is evolving too. Nobody has all the answers. So that’s where, you know that partnership really does come into play and

[00:10:34] I think that’ll continue throughout 2026 and beyond for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that might be it for the first episode of Stacked here.

[00:10:43] Matt, thanks for being ourfirst guest. At this point, you are the best guest we’ve ever had on this show, so thanks for-

[00:10:50] Yeah. Well, I guess we’ll see if I get invited back, but happy to, you know, happy to be here, happy to be part of it. And, you know, again, we’ll share a little bit of information in the comments section of [00:11:00] how, you know, anybody interested in joining the, Midwest Founders Club can do that and what some of the upcoming events look like.

[00:11:06] Absolutely. Maybe we’ll check back at the end of the year and see if everything we said, came to light. All right. Thanks Matt. Wonderful. Thanks Mark. Thanks for having me.